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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/28312797">The Art of Storytelling on a Winter Evening</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/Her_Madjesty/pseuds/Her_Madjesty'>Her_Madjesty</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Twelve Days of Christmas - 2020 [12]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Much Ado About Nothing (1993)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Alternative Universe - Nutcracker Fusion, F/M</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-12-25</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-12-25</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-10 15:53:20</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>8,286</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/28312797</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/Her_Madjesty/pseuds/Her_Madjesty</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>The stories of Herr Rattenkönig differ depending on the person doing the telling.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Hero/Don John (Much Ado About Nothing)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Twelve Days of Christmas - 2020 [12]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/2037376</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>7</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>11</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>The Art of Storytelling on a Winter Evening</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>On the twelfth day of Christmas, a harried writer gave to thee...your final piece of the challenge!</p><p>My thanks again to all of you lovely folk who have stuck with me through this task. This piece, if you can't tell, comes to you at 5:30am - much later than usual, but within the 24th/25th deadline I set myself. I wrote all of this today and am extremely tired (but I celebrated Christmas on the 23rd, so really, does a late night matter all that much?). </p><p>In any case, I hope you enjoy the piece. Thank you again so, so much for sticking with me and for making this challenge more bearable. I can only hope that I've done you all justice.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p class="western">The stories of Herr Rattenkönig differ depending on the person doing the telling. In the midst of a winter celebration, with the children gathered around him and more than a few of their parents, as well, Hero’s uncle Antonio tells the story like this:</p><p class="western">Once upon a time, Herr Rattenkönig ruled over a world untouched by human hands. A rat of tremendous size and strength, he sat upon a throne made out of his own subjects and ordered them about from one of his three oversized heads. He was also in the habit, or so Antonio claims of cutting out hearts.</p><p class="western">The first head would weigh the subject in question, taking in her value and her accomplishments and her dreams.</p><p class="western">The second would do the wooing – bring her close, fluff her ego, remind her that she was special, special above all the rest; capable, in her many talents, of winning the attention of Herr Rattenkönig.</p><p class="western">The third would do the cutting. In the silence of the night, it would be his teeth and his tongue that tore the hearts from these won-over girls. And it would be at his claws that the heart would be divided for the three of the heads to share.</p><p class="western">The children at Antonio’s feet do not fear Herr Rattenkönig; they are too young. The boys draw their little wooden swords and swear to bring him to justice (though it is not justice of which they dream). The young girls look at one another out of the corner of their eyes. More than one swears to help her friend of the day escape Herr Rattenkönig’s clutches, while one – Beatrice – steals the sword of one of the boys nearest to hear and promises to do battle against Herr Rattenkönig herself.</p><p class="western">She wins a laugh not only from her friends but from the parents in the crowd. Antonio, though, studies her with a close eye before bidding her to come join him at his feet.</p><p class="western">Beatrice does not go all at once. Instead, with her sword in hand, she reaches out with her other and bring a quiet girl – a younger girl – up to the front of the heap with her.</p><p class="western">And Hero looks up at her uncle with wide eyes and ask him in a soft voice if Herr Rattenkönig can truly never love the girls that he woos.</p><p class="western">Antonio hesitates in his story, looking down at his niece’s earnest face. At her side, Beatrice teases her while, in the same breath, promising to keep her heart safe from Herr Rattenkönig should he come for her, one day.</p><p class="western">“I do not know if Herr Rattenkönig can love, dear Hero,” says her uncle, at last, much to the disappointment of the crowd. “But if there was anyone who could make him, I have no doubt in my heart that it could be you.”</p><p class="western">Hero flushes under her uncle’s praise, while the boys and girls of her father’s court begin to break into their little groups. She lingers by his knee even as Beatrice wanders away, distracted by some brawl or another.</p><p class="western">She leans into her uncle’s touch as he rests his hand on her shoulder. And they sit there in silence, on that early Christmas Eve, with snow falling down against the windows of the governor’s earnest home.</p><p class="western">*</p><p class="western">A world away, a young boy spends his Christmas at the knee of his mother in a room that is too hot to beget any degree of snow. Here, the lady sits with her sisters of blood and trade and passes a bottle about the room, while, down the hall, Auntie Columbia entertains one of the last male visitors of the evening.</p><p class="western">And the boy’s mother’s story goes like this:</p><p class="western">Once upon a time, a brave prince tromped through a wintery forest.</p><p class="western">He did not know where he was meant to go, only that he was not meant to stay where he was. For he was a prince and a lord of the land, and it was within his right to seek those things that had been taken away from him.</p><p class="western">And so he walked, through the cold and the trees and the packs of wolves who haunted his every step. He kept his sword sharp and his eyes bright, and he watched as the woods began to thin to better welcome him towards the castle that would be his home.</p><p class="western">But at the gate of that beautiful castle, with all of its riches and wonders, would stand two guards. And one would ignore him entirely save to keep him from the path forward, while the other would listen with a sympathetic ear.</p><p class="western">“This castle belongs to Herr Rattenkönig,” the sympathetic guard would eventually say. “If you wish to claim it for your own, you will have to do battle with him.”</p><p class="western">“So let me in,” the prince would demand, “and I shall show you all that I am worthy.”</p><p class="western">The silent guard would not open his gate, but the sympathetic guard would. And the prince would make it not but a step inside before Herr Rattenkönig would descend upon him.</p><p class="western">“But what is Herr Rattenkönig ?” the boy asks.</p><p class="western">His mother tilts her head back, her throat bobbing as she drinks. “Herr Rattenkönig ,” she tells him, “is both a man and a beast. And it will be up to the boy to decide if he is to fight the creature or to join him to better take his castle again.”</p><p class="western">The boy, being a boy, will huff and cross his arms, rolling his eyes at his mother’s dismissal. “Why would he join him?” he demands from the floor, while a shriek echoes from down the hall. “The castle is his!”</p><p class="western">And he will not understand, at the time, while his mother’s eyes will grow so sad, or why she will pass her bottle along to her friends. Instead, he will only know that she will gather him in her arms, though he is growing too big for her to do so, and tuck his head beneath her chin.</p><p class="western">“Sometimes, my love,” she whispers in his ear, “we must make sacrifices for the things we want most. And it is up to the prince, in the end, to determine whether he wants to return to the wood – for Herr Rattenkönig is strong, far stronger than him – or if he wants to do what he can to claim his birthright from the inside.”</p><p class="western">A door opens down the hall – and out spills Auntie Columbia, followed shortly by her beau. The women greet her with a cheer, and she sweeps the boy out of his mother’s lap for a short dance around the room. Their Christmas fills with laughter, and the boy forgets his story in favor of the promise of presents, come the rising of the sun.</p><p class="western">But his mother will remember. And before the world takes her, she will address a letter to Herr Rattenkönig to stuff in her prince’s pocket.</p><p class="western">(And Don John will come to that gate to meet his half-brother and the man who governs Messina. And in staring at them – one sympathetic, one who desires not to see him at all – he will hear his mother’s voice in his head; will see Herr Rattenkönig in the guise of his father, standing tall and proud above the lands that he should be able to call his own.</p><p class="western">And he will make his decision, all the while trying to ignore the pain of the little boy still living – clinging to life – in the back of his mind.)</p><p class="western"> </p><p class="western">***</p><p class="western"> </p><p class="western">Wintertime.</p><p class="western">It has been many a year since Hero has sat at her uncle’s knee. She stands, now, arm in arm with Beatrice as they tromp towards her father’s carriage, listening to the laughter of the local children who want to run about in their wake. Beatrice sticks out her tongue at the bravest of them, daring them closer with the threat of responding snowballs, but Hero takes candy canes from her pockets and passes them along before the she steps up and into the carriage.</p><p class="western">Inside, her father – and Beatrice’s uncle, Leonato – sits pressed next to his own brother, his nose red for the cold. Antonio reaches out and gives Hero’s hood a tweak, while Leonato’s eyes sparkle in the coming night.</p><p class="western">“Girls, girls,” he chides, deliberating ignoring the gaggle of children just outside the carriage door. “You’ll be the ones explaining to Lord Redeitopi why we’re late, if our driver cannot get us to his estate in time.”</p><p class="western">“And I will inform his lordship and any other man who complains,” Beatrice says, “that if they so longed for our attendance while we were absent from their sides that they may choose to spend their remaining hours with us. The ones passed are not coming back to them, no matter how prettily they complain.”</p><p class="western">Hero laughs and presses her face into the side of Beatrice’s hood, while Antonio throws his head back and cackles. Leonato raises his hands to the sky, exasperation and fondness making a merry war of his face.</p><p class="western">Outside in the cold, the carriage driver smacks his reins against the flanks of two steady horses already standing ankle-deep in snow. The horses snort and start forward, leaving the children to follow in the wake they leave, cheering all the while.</p><p class="western">As Beatrice regales her uncles with some tale or another from the women’s misadventure in the night’s preparation, Hero presses a hand to the glass of the window. Outside, the lights of their own home dwindle in the distance, and the gates to the estate swing shut behind them. Those well-kept, snow-covered paths fade into a wood of evergreen, and later into cobblestone lit by gas light.</p><p class="western">Ahead some several miles is the carriage round that they’ll fall into with the rest of the local nobility, for every year Lord Redeitopi holds his Christmas masquerade, and it is all but a crime for them to fail to attend.</p><p class="western">Across the carriage, Hero’s uncle cradles his mask in his hands – a golden recollection of Remus, wolf fangs embedded just above the open mouth. Her father bears his opposite, Romulus. Beatrice has yet to pull out a mask of her own, but her dress – a symphony of deep reds and golden trim, delicate enough to match her curls but unrelenting in their braiding – suggests some manner of warrior princess: just delicate enough to please Hero’s father but daring enough to suit her, in kind.</p><p class="western">Hero’s own mask is tucked into the bag at her side. She dares not reveal it, lest the cold and the snow damage its delicate paint.</p><p class="western">The ride, blessedly, is a smooth thing, aided along by the snow-less cobblestone. By the time the party arrives at Lord Redeitopi’s estate, Beatrice has the whole of them red in the face with laughter. Hero barely manages to bring it back into her throat as their carriage comes to a stop and the footman opens the door.</p><p class="western">Out steps Remus, then Romulus, then Bellona of Rome. Finally – a second or two later – comes Helena, smoothing her dress and cloak of wrinkles. Behind them, Lord Redeitopi’s men gather up their luggage while an waiting man invites them up towards the front doors, where a collection of the area’s other admirable faces have gathered to wait for entry.</p><p class="western">“It’s far too cold for him to keep us out for long,” Hero hears her father grouse, much to the agreement of those men nearest him. She makes eye contact with Beatrice from behind her mask and reaches out almost on instinct. Beatrice’s hand is already waiting for hers. The cousins draw close, better to fight off the cold.</p><p class="western">Lord Redeitopi’s home is one of the oldest on the continent. It’s grand drive curls through acres of woodland used for hunting in the fairer seasons, and beyond its edifice lies a labyrinth of gardens – some for amusement and others for practical purposes. The literal labyrinth the man had planted is nearly as old as the estate itself; parts of it have long been cut off, or so the rumors say, for fear of visitors losing their way permanently.</p><p class="western">“I pray you, sir,” Hero hears Beatrice call out to one of Lord Redeitopi’s staff, “is Signoir Mountanto among the lord’s guests tonight?”</p><p class="western">The footman furrows his brow, just barely visible as it is above his thin, black mask. “I know none of that name, lady.”</p><p class="western">“She means Signoir Benedick of Padua,” Hero cuts in, unable to keep the grin out of her voice.</p><p class="western">“Ah!” the footman visibly brightens. “He has returned from his business abroad, lady, yes. You will find him as pleasant as ever at the side of his Lordship’s eldest.”</p><p class="western">“Returned from business abroad a lady?” Beatrice asks (and Hero does not have to imagine the mocking lilt of her mouth). “Why, what a vagrant his Lordship welcomes into his home.”</p><p class="western">“No more vagrant than you, niece,” calls Antonio from somewhere up ahead.</p><p class="western">“I am no vagrant, uncle,” Beatrice calls back. “Were I a man, I would pay my taxes as the King is due and make my position known across the land. Alas, I must leave you and our other uncle to do so for me – and in that, perhaps I am a vagrant to go so unnamed as I do.”</p><p class="western">The footman takes the opportunity to slip away from the fray, all while Hero stifles her laughter behind her mask. Up ahead of them all, the doors to Lord Redeitopi’s estate crack open, revealing a sliver of golden light out into the cold.</p><p class="western">From that sliver bursts a slip of a man, perhaps no wider than shadow itself. He fills the gap and seems to blink at the waiting crowd, all of whom go silent at his appearance.</p><p class="western">After a second, he clears his throat. Opens his mouth. Inhales –</p><p class="western">But before he can speak, both doors fly open in earnest. A great cheer goes up from the crowd, and the shadow man is all but trampled in the people’s rush to make their way in and out of the cold.</p><p class="western">Beatrice laughs, as do many others, and even Hero smiles. She makes a point, though, in moving with the crowd, to find the man near the side of the mess and to help him back up to his feet.</p><p class="western">“My thanks, lady,” he says, touching the tip of the hat his lord has no doubt bid him to wear.</p><p class="western">“My pleasure, sir,” Hero replies, only briefly saddened that he cannot see her answering smile. Instead, she curtsies to him and has the pleasure of watching him awkwardly stumble over his insistence that she not. Beatrice tugs her away before he is able to get a word in, and then the two of them are inside, away from the cold and being beckoned into lines by patient parties willing to take their cloaks up to their various rooms.</p><p class="western">“The lord’s fool, I imagine,” Beatrice says, low in her cousin’s ear. Hero glances back and sees the man still desperately straightening his coat and rubbing his hands against the rush of cold.</p><p class="western">“Poor man,” Hero says as she passes her cloak away.</p><p class="western">“A rich man, rather,” Beatrice corrects, linking arms with Hero again. The two women follow the crowd towards the lord’s ballroom, where strains of music have already started to stir. “Any man employed by the lord will find himself not wanting for money – though wanting for time to himself, perhaps.” She pauses for a moment, and Hero thinks that her eyes look thoughtful. “Would that I thought the lord would content himself with the one fool, and yet he holds Signoir Benedict on staff.”</p><p class="western">Hero – considers, and then indulges her dearest love. “Perhaps Signoir Benedick finds him on one of the lord’s son’s staffs, freeing the lord to seek out the aid of a fool of his own.”</p><p class="western">Beatrice snaps her fingers, delighted. “You’ve found the heart of it, cousin,” she says. “I will have to interrogate the men myself to determine which of them has made the fool of his staff, if not a fool of himself.”</p><p class="western">They step into the ballroom together, at that, and are nearly brought to a stop for the cheer that goes up through the guests.</p><p class="western">In the corner of the room, a sweeping orchestra takes up its bow to open the ball with a reel. All across the ceiling are golden sweeps of fabric, punctuated with garlands that hang like Maypoles full of ornaments . Tables litter the outskirts of the room, and several casks of wine rest atop one another, ready, it seems, to welcome in the night.</p><p class="western">It is the room’s bookends, however, that draw the most attention. On one side of the room is a marvelous fireplace, crackling with the scent of fresh wood and pig fat, what for the swine roasting above it. It is large enough that Hero and several of her kin could step inside it with space aplenty between them and still not fill it; the pig alone is dwarfed, though the fire makes a happy guest around it.</p><p class="western">On the other side of the room is the tree.</p><p class="western">Lord Redeitopi’s forests are renown for their splendor; Hero knows that she should not be surprised by the size of the beast he’s brought indoors with him. The tree, however, seems almost monstrous in its girth. The star on its top could be set in the heavens themselves for its distance from the earth.</p><p class="western">The splendor is almost unbearable. Hero feels her heart pounding in her ears and wonders if it is possible to float away from this place with the help of joy alone.</p><p class="western">But there is Beatrice to anchor her. Her cousin grabs her hand and pulls – and then, the two women are off, moving beyond their chaperons, in as much as the men may be called so, and towards the line of dancers that seems to have been conjured out of nothing in the center of the room.</p><p class="western">The dancers come together and break apart at a rapid pace, each twirl and connection punctuated by claps and laughter. Hero and Beatrice take the first dance together before Beatrice – or, rather, Bellona – is swept away by Diana in a silver gown. Hero waves to her as she goes, then lets herself be carried away by a group of nymphs, the lot of them doing their best to outrun a group of satyrs in pursuit.</p><p class="western">She makes it a good half of the way around the ballroom, drunk on laughter and adrenaline, before she finds herself half-collided with the chest of a man in a fine uniform. Her laughter dies almost at once. Hero’s eyes go wide, and she takes a step back, better to curtsy and offer her apologies.</p><p class="western">The solider looking down at her laughs, a boyish, happy thing. His mask covers all but his bottom lip, revealing a bare face and striking blue eyes.</p><p class="western">Hero finds herself smiling in response to his presence, even without him saying a word.</p><p class="western">“My lady Helena,” says the soldier – and by the lines on his mask, Hero might call him a nutcracker. “You’re fast in flight.”</p><p class="western">“My apologies, sir Nutcracker,” Hero replies, inclining her head.</p><p class="western">The orchestra changes its tune. The music turns quick, inviting – and then the Nutcracker’s hands are on Hero’s waist.</p><p class="western">“Apologize to me with a dance,” he says, “and there will be no argument between us.”</p><p class="western">The abrupt contact...throws her, but Hero lets the man lead her onto the dance floor. There, the two of them dive into a tarantella, joining other couples as the world starts to spin its merry colors around them.</p><p class="western">The Nutcracker does not speak – at least, not much – as they take the floor by storm. Instead, Hero can feel him laughing beneath her hands, can see the glint of his smile as they make their way around the room. There is a brief tussle between the two of them as he spins her the wrong direction – she corrects him and is lifted from the ground for her efforts.</p><p class="western">When she comes back to earth, Hero stumbles, the excitement of the dance conflicting with a twinge of worry. Her Nutcracker does not seem to register it; instead, within an instant, though, he’s back to her, unrelenting against her hip as he bows his head close; possessive and overwhelming and wrong, wrong, wrong.</p><p class="western">Hero struggles to summon breath back into her lungs; can feel all him pressed up against her like this. For an instant, it is only the two of them in this grand ballroom – but it is not a romantic thing, this isolation. Instead, she can feel those blue eyes looking over her, watching her, threatening to consume her and spit out her bones like they are nothing, nothing at all.</p><p class="western">There is a tap on her shoulder.</p><p class="western">(The room comes back.)</p><p class="western">Hero spins as, across the room, the orchestra shifts away from its tarantella. They move the strings into a slower beat, while a man – a wizard, a writer; Herr Drosselmeyer from her children’s stories – stands waiting, his arms open to receive her.</p><p class="western">Hero thinks she hears her Nutcracker start to complain, but her hip aches and her heart is pounding, and she wants nothing more than to get away.</p><p class="western">She all but throws herself into this stranger’s arms.</p><p class="western">To his credit, he does not stumble under her approach. Instead, his gloved hands are cool when they catch her, and he maneuvers her with ease from the line of dancers into a circle of his own making where the Nutcracker can no longer reach her.</p><p class="western">Hero cannot meet his eyes for a long moment, too busy trying to catch her breath. By the time she manages, her feet have begun to move of their own accord, and she and her stranger have stuck out on a rhythm of their own.</p><p class="western">Drosselmeyer does not try to make conversation with her. Instead, he waits, his black eyes steady on hers as she comes back to herself.</p><p class="western">“Thank you,” Hero says at last, her voice a breathless thing.</p><p class="western">Her stranger’s grip tightens on her hands – though it is not an uncomfortable grip. Instead, he loosens it again when she winces, and the look in his eye turns almost sympathetic.</p><p class="western">“Do not thank me too kindly, Lady Helena,” he says – and that voice is not familiar to her; it is too rich and low and gravely, like a day out in the cold. “Herr Nutcracker is no friend of mine. I did not so much come to your rescue as I came to plague him.”</p><p class="western">Despite herself, Hero feels her mouth start to quirk up in a wry grin. “I’m loathed to benefit from your feud, sir,” she says, letting the stranger guide her in a spin. “But I thank you all the same.”</p><p class="western">The stranger grunts. When he does not speak again, Hero lets him better lead their duality, moving in a step closer so that he may hold her as they move.</p><p class="western">Their in-tandem steps are a curious thing, but she finds herself enjoying the sway of them. The hand on her waist wraps around to hold nearly the whole of her back, and she is whisked in circle after circle, even as she is careful to keep her feet moving as they should.</p><p class="western">(Across the room: there is the Nutcracker, his blue eyes always watching her. But there is Beatrice, too, in all of her war-like glory, and there is her prey: a man dressed as Mars but who speaks like Bacchus, all quips and deflections in their merry little war.)</p><p class="western">The orchestra's song comes to an end. The urge to cling to her stranger nearly overwhelms her, but Hero forces herself to let go as partners across the floor come to take their bows. Almost at once, the Nutcracker begins to approach – but Drosselmeyer pulls her after him, guiding her as the music changes again to an un-peopled corner near the window.</p><p class="western">Hero goes with him gladly, only pausing to take a flute of wine in her hand.</p><p class="western">Sheltered in this corner of the ballroom, she presses herself against the window, letting the cold of the winter air cool her over-warm skin. Drosselmeyer stands like some faceless guard in front of her, his face half-turned away, as though his mask is not doing enough to obscure his identity from her.</p><p class="western">Hero takes the opportunity that she has and shifts her own mask in place, taking a long drink of her wine as she does. When she’s finished, she clears her throat and holds the glass out to her companion.</p><p class="western">Drosselmeyer stares at it, then her.</p><p class="western">Hero hesitates, but she does not withdraw her hand.</p><p class="western">The fingers of his glove brush hers as Drosselmeyer takes the drink from her. She watches for a second too long; sees well-kept stubble beneath his mask, then forces herself to turn away to give him the same privacy he offered her.</p><p class="western">He finishes the wine and passes off the glass to one of the staff. They stay together in that companionable silence, a pleasant bubble of emptiness forming around the two of them.</p><p class="western">“Will you be staying through the evening?” Hero asks at last, her tongue awkward in her mouth even as her heart eases from her panic.</p><p class="western">Drosselmeyer starts, as though he did not expect to hear her speak. “...yes,” he says, after a long beat.</p><p class="western">“Do you have presents waiting for you in the morning?”</p><p class="western">Another pause. Another “...yes.”</p><p class="western">Hero smiles, endeared by the stranger’s shyness. She stands as the feeling blooms between the two of them, straightening out her dress as she goes.</p><p class="western">Satisfied with her appearance, she brushes her fingers over the back of the stranger’s hand. He pulls his eyes from the dance floor at last to better look at her – and behind the mask, she can see the confusion; the doubt – and a hint of fear.</p><p class="western">Hero softens herself as best as she can, speaking as though to a frightened horse in a field. “Will you come dance with me again?” she asks him. “I have no proper gift to give you; would that I knew you better so that my gift might suit you.”</p><p class="western">She sees his mouth open – close – open again. Finally, Drosselmeyer clears his throat, then fixes his hand – somewhere, she cannot quite tell.</p><p class="western">“I think you speak in earnest, Lady Helena,” he says, though his voice is full of doubt, “so I will do you the same honor. You do not wish to dance with me. There are others who would be better suited to your company.”</p><p class="western">Hero knows he cannot make full sense of her change in expression, and so she knows that her smile is lost on this poor man. “Those who wish my company,” she says, “are not the ones I am asking to join me. Though if you would rather I leave...” and she pulls her hand away, better to make her way if not towards the dance floor then towards one of the staff, what with their wine glasses ever-so-warm in the light of the evening.</p><p class="western">The stranger’s hand is on her wrist. Hero does not smile in her triumphant, but the feeling of victory settles there in the cockles of her heart.</p><p class="western">Drosselmeyer, for what it’s worth, looks almost embarrassed behind his mask. Hero gives him his moment to compose himself and waits for him to speak.</p><p class="western">“I do not wish to dishonor you, lady,” he tells her, his voice soft and – hateful, though not, it seems, of her.</p><p class="western">Hero hesitates, then places a comforting hand over his. She feels him pull back, and she lets him go, but she wills the warmth of that feeling to stay with him as he does.</p><p class="western">“You do me no dishonor, stranger,” she reminds him. “But I will not make you uncomfortable.”</p><p class="western">She curtsies, then, and waits for his answering bow. Satisfied, she tries to gift him a final smile. As she turns, she finds herself pausing, then glancing over her shoulder.</p><p class="western">“Though might I make a request, Sir Drosselmeyer?”</p><p class="western">The stranger pauses.</p><p class="western">Hero lowers her voice. “If...if you find yourself more inclined, be it to dance or to...thwart,” and here her eyes glance over the dance floor, “do not hesitate to find me. I welcome the friendly hand, even when the friendliness is not the intent.”</p><p class="western">Drosselmeyer looks at her, that perpetually-confused expression readable even through his mask. “...if the lady wishes,” he acquiesces at last. Abruptly, he steps forward and moves his mask back again.</p><p class="western">Hero does not look at him. But she feels him take her hand.</p><p class="western">Drosselmeyer bows and presses a kiss to her knuckles. It is more pressure than kiss; more sharp corners and teeth than any gentleness she is used to. But there’s a softness to its corners, even with the power lurking beneath its intent.</p><p class="western">When he stands, he rights his mask and nods to her properly. Hero inclines her head, then turns away before he can read too much of her masked expression.She goes off seeking Beatrice, or her uncle, instead, her movements fluid as the orchestra picks up once again.</p><p class="western">(Behind her, a kingly figure breaks away from the rest of the crowd. Drosselmeyer does not see him until it is too late, and then he is upon him, and there is no more dancing to be had.)</p><p class="western"> </p><p class="western">*</p><p class="western">Night settles on the Redeitopi estate.</p><p class="western">Beatrice has long since dropped into an easy sleep, her shoes and dress abandoned by the fireplace in their room. Hero’s father and uncle have absconded, as old men are wont to do, with several of their peers and are likely to be down in one of Lord Redeitopi’s parlors, playing cards and drinking coffee or even preparing presents for those wards they have brought with them. The thought almost makes her smile, despite the latent shaking of her hands.</p><p class="western">And yet – her hands are still shaking.</p><p class="western">There is a bruise forming from where Herr Nutrcracker gripped her waist, his hold unrelenting as he swung her about the room. It is not that bruise, though, that haunts her (though she imagines the blue eyes behind that painted mask will stay with her as she goes about her dreams).</p><p class="western">Instead, it is the burning in the back of her hand – the gift that belonged to her savior before he bestowed it onto her.</p><p class="western">She did not see much of that hidden face, could not come to know the man behind the Drosselmeyer mask. But she remembers the brush of stubble against her skin, the feel of sharp teeth hidden behind plush lips.</p><p class="western">Hero draws her knees up to her chest, dressed in her nightgown and wondering when the warmth of the fire will finally reach her.</p><p class="western">Down below – or perhaps up above; the estate distorts itself around her – a clock tower rings out.</p><p class="western">Midnight.</p><p class="western">Hero presses her forehead to her knees and reaches out for sleep –</p><p class="western">but sleep does not come.</p><p class="western">When another pass of time has come and gone, she slips from the bed she shares with her cousin. Slipping on a simple pair of shoes, she moves from the room, taking nothing but a candle with her as she heads out into the night.</p><p class="western">Wandering is not in Hero’s nature, but neither is lying awake for hours with nothing but her thoughts for company.</p><p class="western">So she makes herself known to the Redeitopi estate.</p><p class="western">There are no aides in the halls she walks. Instead, Hero takes to those carpeted halls and makes a game of identifying the portraits she sees on the walls. Here is a man old enough to be Lord Redeitopi’s grandfather, his expression as stern as the lord’s. Here is a gaggle of women gathered over a pond; here is one woman in particular who has Lord Pedro’s dimples in her smile.</p><p class="western">Towards the end of the third – or is it the fourth? – hall Hero walks down, there is a picture of the young lord, himself. It radiates warmth like the sun, brimming with gold as the man’s brown eyes look out to meet hers.</p><p class="western">Hero feels herself start to smile back and warms, even as another small part of him resists the draw of that illustrative charisma.</p><p class="western">(There are no portraits, she notices, of the lord’s youngest son – though, in a way, she is not surprised. The story of John the bastard’s legitimization nearly ruined the Redeitopi reputation; though Lord Redeitopi had not been married when the man revealed himself, the lordling had been old enough to suggest some manner of indiscretion within the year of his wife’s death. The rumor mill had run on nothing else for months, even though the lordling himself was never introduced to society. It took years for curious minds to settle, and even then, the lordling was the primary topic of conversation among mothers and girls across the countryside.</p><p class="western">His half-brother, it turned out, was the far greater catch, and those who met the man believed him to be less than refined. Thus, the rumors dropped him, and he became little more than a ghostly fixture at his renowned father’s side.)</p><p class="western">Hero’s wandering feet do not linger in the portrait hall. Instead, with time moving around her like waves of honey, she moves down – down, down, down, until the contained halls give way to the foyer and to the ballroom once more.</p><p class="western">The decorations are still in place. Without the light of the lamps and candles, though, they are nothing but ice-like pillars above Hero’s head. The orchestra has long abandoned its post, and the fire, though still burning, is little more than a dancing sprite at Hero’s side.</p><p class="western">Hero sets her candle down on one of the abandoned tables and starts to hum under her breath. On a whim, she spins through the room – and she laughs, letting the sound fill the air around her without any fears at all.</p><p class="western">There is no Nutcracker here to demand her attention; no Beatrice to light up the room. It is just her and these pillars; her and these memories; her and –</p><p class="western">Skittering.</p><p class="western">Startled, Hero freezes.</p><p class="western">The room – pauses.</p><p class="western">Then –</p><p class="western">Again!</p><p class="western">She turns. Towards the window, just there – the shadow of a mouse, or a rat, or something large and with tiny claws to better scratch the floor.</p><p class="western">Hero brings her arms up and around herself, trying in this empty room to make herself small. Why there should be rats in an estate like this – that’s why there are cats and dogs about; it’s just not seemly.</p><p class="western">And yet –</p><p class="western">There!</p><p class="western">More skittering, and louder this time. Hero feels something soft pass over her foot and cries out, but the shadow is gone again.</p><p class="western">Bold little things. Her heart pounds in her chest as Hero draws towards the center of the room, ignorant of the way the Christmas tree and its shadow loom over her head.</p><p class="western">Again –</p><p class="western">and again!</p><p class="western">Strange skittering from all directions, and chittering like chatter from tiny mouths. Hero presses a hand to her own mouth to keep her panting soft, but there is no denying it now:</p><p class="western">the lord’s house is infested, and the rats are all around her.</p><p class="western">In the darkness, they seem to climb on top of one another; stacks and stacks of rats coming out of the walls and making off with what crumbs they are able. Unable to escape, Hero holds still and closes her eyes, breathing hard into her hand and willing someone –</p><p class="western">Anyone –</p><p class="western">And there.</p><p class="western">In the darkness, the sound of steel on wood.</p><p class="western">Hero opens her eyes.</p><p class="western">The sight before her cannot be readily explained; she blinks once, then twice, and still, it remains.</p><p class="western">One: a man, his sword bright in the darkness, charging forward into the swarm.</p><p class="western">Two: a man, his outline made of moving objects; a thin crown on his dark head, moving in and out of the shadows.</p><p class="western">What happens happens in an instant. Hero hears the sword connect with something thick; hears the scream of rats in the night; hears grunts and a shout and swearing; some prayer or innovation, maybe a man’s name –</p><p class="western">And then:</p><p class="western">silence.</p><p class="western">The clattering of wood against the ground, followed by a body hitting the floor.</p><p class="western">The rats nearest to her feet scatter. Hero nearly slumps where she stands and only catches herself as something man-shaped not far from her groans, pressing itself into the coldness of the floor.</p><p class="western">In the firelight, she can make better sense of what she sees: it is a man, indeed, but a man who is wounded; a man with a neck that bleeds and bleed and bleeds.</p><p class="western">(A few feet away, a nutcracker lies abandoned and broken, but in the darkness, Hero does not see him.)</p><p class="western">Despite the trembling of her hands and the sound of claws in the distance, Hero acts without thinking.</p><p class="western">In an instance, she is down on the floor with this stranger, reaching for the hem of her nightgown. The man is in no shape to stop her; he barely reacts when she rips off an inch from the hem and moves to bind it around his neck.</p><p class="western">Hero lifts his head into her lap and presses her hand against the wound, trying not to cry out as her hands quickly wet with blood.</p><p class="western">(There are tears on her cheeks, but she cannot feel them, too fixed on this scene in front of her.)</p><p class="western">And somewhere –</p><p class="western">The man coughs: wet, ragged, barely alive.</p><p class="western">Wind tugs at Hero’s dress.</p><p class="western">Hero looks up.</p><p class="western">The ballroom is still empty save for her and this man; this veritable stranger now dying on the ground. He groans again; she leans in and presses the length of dresses harder against the wound, her hair forming a curtain between the two of them and the rest of the world.</p><p class="western">“It’s going to be okay,” she whispers (though her voice still echoes through the hall). “You’re going to be alright.</p><p class="western">The man makes a noise that might have been a laugh in another life but now just sounds –</p><p class="western">sad.</p><p class="western">The cold breeze tugs at her bare arms, pulls on strands of her hair.</p><p class="western">The tree, so welcoming earlier, looms now.</p><p class="western">Beneath her, the injured stranger shudders. The last skitterings of mice against the cold floor disappear into the silence of the night.</p><p class="western">Above her head, Hero hears an owl cry out.</p><p class="western">“The tree,” her stranger rasps – and his voice is a familiar thing.</p><p class="western">Almost unwittingly, Hero follows the hand that shivers as he raises it; watches as he grasps for that giant’s pine.</p><p class="western">“Okay,” she whispers, then clears her throat. “Okay.”</p><p class="western">She rips off another length of her dress’s fabric and wraps it around the man’s neck again, tying it off in a bow. Then, with a huff, she stands. Her bare feet nearly turn to ice against the floor, but she steadies herself.</p><p class="western">It takes considerable effort to wrap her arms beneath the stranger’s armpits. It takes even more to start dragging him towards the tree. He does his best to help her, but their journey is still a slow one. It leaves a trail of red splotches behind them as they go.</p><p class="western">It feels like a small eternity has passed by the time Hero feels pine branches against the back of her neck. Her grip on her stranger loosens, but the man gasps and groans, one hand coming up to grab onto hers.</p><p class="western">“Further in,” he demands – and were he not injured, she’d call that tone commanding; affronted; expectant.</p><p class="western">But he is an injured man, and given the state of his wound –</p><p class="western">Well.</p><p class="western">Hero readjusts her grip and continues her trek.</p><p class="western">The girth of the tree seems almost infinite. Between one blink and the next, the dim candles of the ballroom are all but obscured for the branches in her way. Hero treks on, though, listening to the man’s breathing as it grows slower...and slower.</p><p class="western">The chill against her back leaves goosebumps in its wake. She wants to glance over her shoulder, but it takes all of her concentration to put one foot behind the other.</p><p class="western">(Idly, she wonders where this tree’s trunk properly is; how large this ballroom must be beyond what the tree obscures.)</p><p class="western">Somewhere between one infinite step and the next, she thinks she hears her stranger chuckle. Hero falters – and on her back foot, she feels something cold.</p><p class="western">The grip her stranger has on her hand loosens. Hero hears him breathe – and it is a proper breath; a full breath; like a dying man coming back from the brink.</p><p class="western">She stumbles back in surprise –</p><p class="western">and lands in a bank of snow.</p><p class="western">In front of her, the strange leans back, propping himself up on his elbows. She can only see the outline of him, what for the dim light, but she isn’t doing as much staring as she might under other circumstances. Instead, Hero busies herself with the business of launching herself out of the snow, turning once she’s found her feet and staring at the expanse that’s appeared behind her.</p><p class="western">And it is just that – an expanse.</p><p class="western">For this is no ballroom.</p><p class="western">Beyond the remaining branches of the evergreen tree – and they must have passed the trunk some time ago – there are hills and hills of snow. They could be standing in Lord Redeitopi’s own forests were there any gardens for them to explore; any laughter or music to be heard.</p><p class="western">Hero presses a hand to her mouth and watches as it turns to ice between her fingers. She turns back –</p><p class="western">and there is her stranger, standing.</p><p class="western">But where there was once that tree, those candles, that ballroom with its bloody floor, there is only snow.</p><p class="western">And the stranger – he is outlined in that white and blue, Hero’s torn dress a punctuation mark on his wounded neck. Hero watches, hands shaking, as he reaches up and undoes her careful bow. She wants to cry out, to bid him to be careful –</p><p class="western">but the scraps of fabric fall to the ground –</p><p class="western">and there is no wound.</p><p class="western">The stranger turns.</p><p class="western">In the dark, it is difficult to make out the various planes of his face, but they are undeniably sour and stern. He looks at her in the darkness, his eyes two dark gems that gleam in what dim light this unbelievable world has to offer.</p><p class="western">And he studies her.</p><p class="western">Hero reaches for her voice, for Helena, for Beatrice, but only the howling of the winter wind comes to rest between them.</p><p class="western">She knows him now.</p><p class="western">This is her Drosselmeyer; this is the youngest son of Lord Redeitopi; this is the bastard that received so many odd looks in the off-season. Tonight, with his face hidden by a mask, he was one person among many, that dour expression hidden by an illusion she could not see through.</p><p class="western">Her eyes widen as he bows to her, his open shirt and bloodied neck contrasts against the waste of snow.</p><p class="western">“Lady Helena,” he says – and there is his voice; no longer raspy or injured, but...tired? Grim? Bitter? “I thank you for your generosity.”</p><p class="western">The wind is a whip against her back, and then – there is Hero’s voice. “It is not generosity to save a life, my lord,” she says, curtsying in reply. “But I know you. You danced with me. Why were you injured so?”</p><p class="western">On of the lordling’s eyebrows jumps on his forehead. He does not smooth his expression; instead, Hero watches as it turns both fierce and thoughtful.</p><p class="western">“An astute question,” he replies, reaching up to touch his neck. Hero looks closer, concerned for the wound – but in every second the passes, it seems to be closing. Her eyes widen as the lordling pulls his hand away, a touch of blood still on his fingers.</p><p class="western">“Most would ask ‘how’,” the lordingly – John – continues. “But as you have saved my life, I will do you the honor of answering you directly. I have allies that are no longer allies, Lady Helena, and I believe that they wish to kill me.”</p><p class="western">Hero – blinks. “I’m so sorry.”</p><p class="western">John the bastard stares at her. He glances behind him, as though to point out some lunacy in her statement.</p><p class="western">Hero continues to stare at the wound in his neck despite his burning expression. Her gaze only jolts upward when he takes a step in her direction.</p><p class="western">“Lady Helena,” he says, his voice slow and low, “I have no want of your pity. I must, however, ask: would you find yourself amiable to apologies if you knew that, in my desire to live, I had trapped you here?”</p><p class="western">“Have you trapped me here, my lord?”</p><p class="western">The lordling looks an instance from throwing up his hands in despair. Instead, Hero watches him take a deep breath and steady himself.</p><p class="western">“You are not scared?”</p><p class="western">Hero looks behind him, then behind her again.</p><p class="western">(And the truth of the matter is that she <em>is </em>– if she thinks about this for too long, it is terrifying in its impossibility just as it is in its loneliness; there is only John, no Beatrice, no father, no uncle, no – anyone.)</p><p class="western">“I may be,” she says, her voice a faint thing. “But I am not yet convinced that this is not an elaborate dream and that I will not wake in your father’s own guestrooms with a headache and my cousin to mock me.”</p><p class="western">Hero sees her companion crack the hint of a smile. He huffs, and his breath disappears with the winter wind.</p><p class="western">(It is only in watching that puff that Hero realizes that she is shivering.)</p><p class="western">John the bastard takes another step forward. Hero does not retreat from him, not even as the distance between them closes with every breath.</p><p class="western">Before long, he is but a hand’s distance away from her, his dark eyes burning with all the heat of coals.</p><p class="western">He is silent. And then –</p><p class="western">“Come with me, Lady Helena,” he says, holding out his hand.</p><p class="western">Hero stares at it, confusion knitting her brow.</p><p class="western">Her companion sighs. “This place is not unfamiliar to me,” he tells her, “though I have only come before in dreams. Walk with me, and before long it will give us a cabin, and in that cabin will be the coats and clothes and people you need to make yourself feel at home again.” He glances over his shoulder as the wind lets out a scream, and Hero sees the line of his shoulders tighten.</p><p class="western">“Is this place dangerous?” she asks, her voice lowered to a whisper.</p><p class="western">Before John can answer, she matches her hand to his. They stand in that clearing, palm to palm, while the wind moves in circles around them.</p><p class="western">John swallows before answering (and Hero, in her frozen haze, cannot help but watch the bob of his Adam’s apple). “I am always in danger here,” he tells her, his fingers tightening around hers. “Whether or not you are remains to be seen.”</p><p class="western">He looks away from her when she raises her gaze to his, but he does not look guilty. Instead, with a tug, he starts to pull her along, guiding her in between trees while their feet sink deep into ever-deepening snow.</p><p class="western">The clearing is all but out of sight when a final question pops into Hero’s head, then bursts through her steadily-bluing lips.</p><p class="western">“I heard rats in the ballroom, lord,” she says, “but that is not a bite at your neck.”</p><p class="western">Again she hears that not-quite laugh, sees John’s breath stolen by the wind.</p><p class="western">“Vermin do me no harm,” he tells her, never looking back at her as they go. “So you are correct in your assessment. It was not a creature that injured me but rather a man – or someone who would like to think himself a man.”</p><p class="western">(And Hero thinks of the nutcracker she bore close to her at the ball; of his glimmering eyes beneath his mask and the work of his painted jaw.)</p><p class="western">A thousand thoughts threaten to bubble forth, but the wind and cold drive them from her throat. Hero closes her eyes and lets John pull her onward.</p><p class="western">In the distance, when she dares to look, there is indeed a soft, orange glow.</p><p class="western">And yet Hero risks a glance backwards.</p><p class="western">In between the falling snow, the tree trunks, and the unrelenting pressure of the night, there is a shadow – not approaching, not looming.</p><p class="western">Waiting.</p><p class="western">Watching.</p><p class="western">Hero feels John’s grip tighten around her fingers and forces her gaze forward, aware, suddenly, of some strange thing’s gaze on the back of her neck.</p><p class="western">***</p><p class="western">(And later, when the Nutcracker reports back to Herr Rattenkönig, his soldier’s uniform loose around the dislocated arm gifted to him by the wayward bastard, his message will include something like this:</p><p class="western">The third Head of Rattenkönig travels through the winter wood on a quest for vengeance, his wound healed and a victim – a woman – a Hero at his side.</p><p class="western">Herr Rattenkoning will read the report with his evening brandy, staring out over a kingdom with the head not immersed in the news. A gaping hole to his left will bleed and bleed and bleed, but he will not faint nor suffer nor even acknowledge the loss where it now stands.</p><p class="western">The Nutcracker will not remain in the room after he delivers his report. Instead, he will move back into the woods, unrelenting as ever, two thoughts fixed in that hand-carved mind:</p><p class="western">One: the Third Head of Rattenkönig is as much an ulcer as it was a boon; and now, like all illnesses, it needs to be totally removed.</p><p class="western">Two: this is not a story that has a place for Heroes that are not, in the end, his own.)</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Let me know what you thought, and merry Christmas!</p><p>Edit, 4/10/21: I'm now on Twitter! Come and find me and my various other platforms <a href="https://twitter.com/HMadjesty">here.</a></p></blockquote></div></div>
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